How to Use Content Marketing to Increase Brand Awareness

So you have created a content marketing strategy and are using social media but how can you use this activity to increase your brand awareness and generate more visitors to your website?

Different Kinds of Content

Content has many forms, from blogs and news items to videos and infographics. Making sure you create and manage content of the right kind for your audience is a core part of building your online following and increasing brand awareness.

News Content

News content is a great place to start as it allows you to create regular content which keeps people interested in your industry up to date on the latest developments. News content has been proven to help drive brand awareness as it encourages repeat visitors to come through to your website. Once people know you as a source of regular industry news updates, they are more likely to return to the site for more of the same information. Consequently, when they are ready to make a purchase choice, your brand will be in their mind as an authority.

Also, industry/topical news is one of the most shared forms of content on social media – if your brand is the one publishing it, it’s your brand that travels with it each time it is shared!

Blogs and Guides

Blogs and guides are also a great way to increase your brand awareness as they can be used to create informative resources which users can come back to time and again. Blogs and guides can take the form of ‘how to’ content, similar to this blog. This kind of ‘How To’ content will become a resource for your users as it’s not time sensitive and can be used to deliver helpful advice which answers customer questions. If you have answered a question or provided a helpful guide for your visitors, they are more likely to want to buy from you as you have helped them achieve something.

When creating blog and guide content for your site, remember to consider the audience you are targeting. If you write lots of really technical blogs but are targeting marketing managers, your content won’t have the required impact. Likewise, if you are creating blogs which are marketing focused but your reader base is IT managers, again the impact won’t be as great.

Infographics and videos

Infographics and videos are highly shareable and, although infographics aren’t a new thing any more, more people are interested in consuming information in this way. Videos are also great as they can be used to create something informative but with personality which can create a more memorable impact for your brand than a page with 600 words on it.

Different kinds of content work for different messages and audiences, so when you are considering the types of content to create, think about who you are targeting and what the goal of your content is.

Using social media to promote your content

Once you have selected which types of content you will use and have published this on your website, the promotion of this plays a significant role in increasing brand awareness.

Although pushing out your content using your RSS feed is one way to make sure people are seeing it, it’s best to look at more manual methods of socially promoting it. Auto generated tweets serve a purpose but you can’t beat the interactions from reaching out to people and making each promotion of content more personal and targeted.

One of the main type of Tweets that I ignore when on Twitter are the “I liked a video on YouTube” posts. These auto Tweets don’t tell me what the content is or why I might like it. However, if someone posts what the video is about and that it’s really useful, funny or informative, I’m more likely to interact with it. Your brand awareness will benefit from being more personal on Twitter and communicating with people directing rather than just broadcasting content with no calls to actions or messages on them.

Content can be a powerful tool to help your brand awareness but you need to make sure you are creating the right content for your audience and that you are sharing your content on social media in the right way.